The global digital media market has been growing almost exponentially over the last decade, and gaming is the biggest sector by quite a margin.
In 2020, the global online gaming market was worth $21.1 billion – a growth of almost 22% from the year before – and that has grown even further to around $26 billion in 2023.
It is estimated that there are more than 1 billion gamers worldwide, and while most of them are in China and Japan, the growth is similar across all countries. Games of choice range from MMORPGs to online poker real money, and players can develop friendships through gaming that span continents and time zones.
Casual social gaming became more prevalent around 2010 – and thanks to several technological advances, the industry might even reach a revenue point of $32.66 billion by 2027.
So, what are the major trends that are influencing gaming lately? Let’s look.
Artificial Intelligence
Unless you have been living under a stone, you’ll have been hearing all sorts of things about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and things like ChatGPT.
When it comes to gaming, AI has been a driving force in Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) for many years, even as far back as the ghosts in Pac Man.
Of course, the modern NPC has been transformed using behaviour trees, ensuring that they can make more complex decisions and behave in a more interactive way. Developing this further would mean that the NPC is able to behave in ways that even the coders won’t see coming – and this could mean ruining the gameplay and the experience for the players.
AI is also used to generate landscapes and backgrounds, which has taken the tedious design of each plant, tree, and rock away from the graphic team. This is known as procedural content generation and is the reason why open-world games are so effortlessly detailed.
Using neural networks, the content generation can even make levels and landscapes that are tailor-made for the player, based on their preferences and the way that they like to play.
It can’t design a complete game (yet), but AI does make creating games more effective and efficient.
VR, AR, and the Metaverse
We have been talking about the potential of Virtual Reality forever – and we seem to be no closer to creating immersive experiences like the ones in the Holodeck on Star Trek, which is disappointing.
Recent forays into VR have been underwhelming, requiring clunky headsets and cables, with a hefty price tag to match. This is not conducive to the type of social gaming that is popular; and it is only the early adopters that have taken advantage of what is currently available.
Augmented Reality, on the other hand, seems to be the way forward. We first saw the potential of this technology with Pokémon Go back in 2016 – and it encouraged players outside, which is obviously much more social (and healthy). Overlaying digital assets from a game into the real world is something that other game developers might be working on, although it seems to be more geared towards the mobile gaming crowd.
All this leads to the metaverse. The parallel virtual reality realm of cyberspace is potentially going to allow visitors to love a second life – using VR and AR, with a functioning economy. We have seen something like this already, with the live concerts in Fortnite and fashion shows in Roblox, making gaming more about connection than competition. The utopian view that the Metaverse innovators are proposing might be a way off yet, but we are already living with smart technology connected to the Internet of Things, so it seems like it could be closer than we might think.
Cloud Gaming
Nobody wants to spend time downloading games now, much as they don’t download movies – and cloud gaming offers the same opportunities for online gaming as Netflix does for serial killer documentaries.
Through the cloud, players can access titles immediately, via an online purchase or through a subscription service. There is no waiting around – and that is just what we need as gamers when immediacy is everything.
Cloud gaming makes cross platform play better too – the interoperability that the Metaverse is hoping for distilled in the ability to play Fortnite with your friends no matter what console or device they are using.
Graphics
No roundup of gaming tech would be complete without a mention of graphics.
There are two main types of game graphics that you are going to see when you are looking at newly developed games – ultra realistic, and stylized.
The major game companies with the biggest budgets are likely to produce the high-fidelity graphics, using the latest in ray tracing technology to create cinematic masterpieces (just look at Red Dead Redemption II).
The smaller indie game developers want to move away from that lush detail in their games as their budget is not made for it – and this is where you’ll get the more cartoonish, stylized designs. This doesn’t lack clarity or colour, but it might lack the attention to detail in things like blades of grass or water, for example.
One is not necessarily better than another – it all depends on the way the game plays.
